


Natasha, Phil, and the Great Wormhole of 2011

by ShortForPhill



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Gen, Gender Identity, Gender Issues, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, MCU but Tony is a lady, Name Changes, Names, Tony Stark's inner monologue, fem!Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 13:11:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12631737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShortForPhill/pseuds/ShortForPhill
Summary: The lead-in to a hostile alien invasion is really not the time for Natasha Stark to have a crisis of identity.It might be Pepper's fault for knowing Agent Coulson's first name.Captain America does not help the situation.





	Natasha, Phil, and the Great Wormhole of 2011

**Author's Note:**

> In which my feelings about identity/gender line up nicely with a throwaway line in Avengers

Natasha Stark is exactly who she wants to be. Probably. Maybe. Definitely not. There’s a sense of lost time as she stares at her reflection.  
“You’re forty years old, you idiot,” she mutters. Forty three, but whatever. Details. “Time to make up for all the mistakes you made in your twenties and thirties and, let’s be honest, probably everything before that too.” She’s literally been reborn as Iron Man, and isn’t that a hoot? The son Howard never got is now the hero his daughter couldn’t be. She pokes at her breasts. They’re not quite as flat as she’d like, but for forty years, she’s in good shape.  
“I am Iron Man.” The world went nuts when she went public as the armored hero. Then they went nuts when she kept the shape of the armor exactly the same, and kept the name too. What did they expect? A boob window? That’s just asking for serious injury. Besides, there’s the whole giant magnet jammed into a hole carved in her chest thing that they seem to forget about. Not that it’s any of their business.

Howard Stark’s butch daughter never cared much for conventions of gender. She’s rich enough to ignore them completely with minimal backlash. Jeans and cargo pants just make sense when she’s in the workshop. Fashion writers praise her suits as bold and innovative for a woman. Natasha just likes that she can wear pants that fit. Pepper Potts takes care of actually coordinating outfits. That woman is a saint for putting up with Natasha’s weird feelings about clothes. And she’s super tall, which is hot.

Natasha sometimes hates her name. But what else would she call herself? Anthony? Ew. The name reminds her of an ex, a particularly condescending one, too. They had disagreed on fundamental economic principles. He’s a professor now. She’s worth billions. So she guesses nobody won that round.  
Sometimes, when nobody is around, she calls herself Phill. That name seems alright. Not too grand, not too off the wall. When she doesn’t want to be Natasha Stark, or even just Natasha, she looks in the mirror and lets herself be Phill. She doesn’t tell anyone about it. Not even Rhodey or Pepper. JARVIS knows, but that’s because he’s smart like that. Natasha designed him that way.

“It’s like Christmas, but with more me,” she says, watching the tower light up with her name. Her father’s name. Her family name. “Stark Tower will be a beacon of clean energy,” she adds. A city on a hill, she hears her history teacher shouting in her memory. She can almost hear Pepper rolling her eyes. It doesn’t matter; they built this thing together. It’s been work, but they make it work. They’re a total dream team, even despite the whole romance thing not working out. How cool is that? They are a rad pair of kickass ladies who get stuff done.  
“Nice one, Phill,” she congratulates herself when only JARVIS can hear. 

Listen, gender isn’t real. Natasha doesn’t mind the female pronouns. She just doesn’t like that being the thing that defines her. The female heir to Howard. The lady genius. The Mistress of Death. Just because she has a uterus. How about just being a genius, billionaire, philanthropist, inventor? Why should it matter how she looks?

She lands at the tower, the custom landing pad whirring to life to disassemble the armor. This kind of view just can't be beat.  
“Sir, Agent Coulson is on the line,” JARVIS informs her.  
“Too bad, I'm not in,” Natasha replies. “I'm actually out.” Perfect timing, as she steps out of the armor. Damn, she’s good.

“You get to put your name on the next tower,” she informs Pepper. “Where do you want it? LA? Seattle? Dallas?”  
“Let’s focus on this tower for now,” Pepper responds in that stern but fond way that she has when Natasha offers to buy her a store’s worth of shoes. That’s another thing Natasha doesn’t get. But Pepper likes art and shoes and has good taste, and Natasha just goes along for the ride.  
“It’s like our baby,” Natasha points to the scale model of the tower. “I did all the work, and you did the whole money and support routine.” In fairness, Natasha has no idea what she’s talking about. Babies are so not her jam. That’s a lie, she loves babies. She just doesn’t know what actually having one entails.  
“I’m sorry, what?”  
“Come on, I did the literal heavy lifting.”  
“We are not having this discussion.”  
“Come on, you did like 12%.”  
“Twelve?”  
“An argument could be made for fifteen.” Natasha is just being an ass. This totally wouldn’t have happened at all without Pepper. And Pepper totally knows that. Natasha is still working on the whole emotions thing, learning how to drop the mask and enjoy the good things coming her way. Baby steps.

“Sir, Agent Coulson is insisting-” JARVIS interrupts. The elevator dings.  
“Aw come on,” Natasha groans. “We were having a moment.”  
“I was having 12% of a moment,” Pepper says. Dammit.

Agent Coulson steps out of the elevator.  
“What good is a private elevator if anyone can use it?” Natasha complains.  
“Ms Stark,” Coulson greets her, professionally bland as ever.  
“Agent,” Natasha replies. She’s not a fan of interruptions. Or SHIELD. They’ve got a weird grudging respect thing going on. Natasha used her last favor from Fury to stick it to Senator Stern. Her next few favors involved not getting arrested for trying to hack SHIELD.  
“Phil!” Pepper says. Both Natasha and Coulson react.  
“Miss Potts,” Coulson - whose name is apparently Phil, why does nobody tell Natasha these things - nods to her. “Always good to see you.”  
“Phil,” Natasha parrots, in disbelief. “His first name is Agent.” It’s like being in third grade and trying to imagine your teacher outside of school. Coulson just oozes federal agent so much he basically is the job. Of all the names in the universe…

Natasha first took the name Phill as a joke in college. They were throwing nicknames around in theatre class to use backstage, and there was already a Natalie in the class who went by Nat.  
“Call me Phill, I guess,” Natasha had said, and it stuck. That’s why she spells it wrong, using two Ls instead of one. There’s a name tag hanging in one of the workshops from a summer camp, written in Natasha’s shitty teen handwriting. On one side it says her real name, and on the other it says Phill. It’s a name that she keeps coming back to, for reasons she isn’t ready to unpack.

“Is this about the Avengers thing?” Pepper asks. “Which I know nothing about,” she adds. Natasha tells Pepper everything. And Rhodey and JARVIS, but Rhodey has a whole other job to do now that Stark Industries doesn’t make weapons and Justin Hammer is in jail. Coulson doesn’t look surprised, but to be fair the guy doesn’t really emote much.  
“I thought I didn’t qualify,” Natasha says, accepting the tablet from Pepper who intercepts it from Coulson. She’s still not a fan of being handed things, not after a few lab accidents involving people handing her the wrong tools. Curse her short arms!  
“I didn’t know that,” Pepper says.  
“Yeah, apparently I’m volatile, self-obsessed, and don’t play well with others.”  
“I knew that.” Ouch. They both know it’s a load of horse shit.  
“Yeah well, change of plans,” Coulson says. Short, clipped, professional. Like his haircut. Natasha turns her attention to the tablet as Pepper starts talking to Coulson about other things. Finding out that Coulson has a personal life (something about a cellist in Portland) is suddenly the second most interesting piece of information Natasha’s been handed today, as she recognises the glowing cube in the file.  
SHIELD lost the tesseract. Which they claim they were using for totally not nefarious purposes. Yeah right. Nobody looks at a magic glowing cube and thinks, hey i could light so many light bulbs with this.  
“Can you track it?” Coulson asks, and there’s just enough personality in that question that says “Hey, bodies are on the line here,” that Natasha yields. Time to put that vacation on hold.  
“Yeah, I’ll get right on it,” she concedes. There’s a blink and you’ll miss it flash of relief across Coulson’s features.  
“Excellent. I’ll see myself out.” Phil Coulson. Who’d have guessed? Maybe it’s time to drop the name that doesn’t really belong to her anyway, Natasha thinks. But she can’t quite let it go.

It’s time for Natasha to decide (once again) what she wants to be when she grows up. For a period of time, the answer was just, “I don’t.” Long-term planning wasn’t a thing. She’s pretty sure this is one of those crossroads Big Choice moments. But life isn’t a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and there’s no way to cheat and look at all the branching paths before deciding. She wants to be an Avenger. And not just a consultant, but a full member of the team. She’s prepared to bully her way onto the team if necessary. She’s not 100% keen on getting into bed with SHIELD, but that’s for her to decide. One lousy profile doesn’t get to determine if she’s hero material or not.  
Natasha has since made amends with Romanoff (the other Natasha). Romanoff even offered to update the profile, but Natasha insisted on leaving it as is for the time being. She likes to keep people guessing. Let the world believe what they want about Natasha Stark. If they can’t be bothered to look past the surface, then they don’t deserve the truth.

The tesseract isn’t the only thing SHIELD pulled out of the ice. Captain America, national treasure and possibly the only thing Howard ever really loved, is alive and defrosted. Natasha has avoided meeting the star-spangled hero. She’s too busy being Iron Man to deal with the popsicle who will probably take one look at her and see Howard’s Daughter. To be fair, defining herself by her own record, rather than Howard’s, is not a flattering picture either. What if she could wipe the slate clean, erase the years as Merchant of Death and Howard’s Legacy and just be Phill? Would that make the inevitable meeting any better?

“Miss Stark.”  
“Captain.” Thirty years of hating a man she’s never met does not translate into a smooth introduction. He’s still wearing the stars and stripes, and oozes goodness from every inch of his scientifically enhanced body. Natasha thinks he might have better tits than she does, which is entirely unfair. He’s obviously read her file. Steve Rogers is not impressed with her. She refuses to be impressed right back.  
“Fury didn’t tell me he was calling you in,” says Steve Rogers, paragon of virtue.  
“Yeah, he does that,” replies Natasha, who is not entirely unconvinced that she hasn’t sprouted horns in response to the halo she swears she sees floating over Captain Perfect’s head. Howard’s ghost hangs between them.  
“Miss-”  
“Just Stark is fine,” Natasha waves away the old-school chivalry. “Or Natasha. Nat if you’re feeling cheeky.” Or Phill, if you dare, she doesn’t add. It hangs in the air with the rest of the things she doesn’t say. Who’s idea was it to trap her on a tiny jet with Captain America? Fury owes her big time.  
Rogers gets this lovely little tic in his face when he’s annoyed.  
“Stark,” he says, like it physically pains him to leave off the honorific.  
“Rogers.” A clap of thunder signals the end of that moment, and the arrival of Thor.


End file.
